Today's Reuters Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News:
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Eastern rattlesnake slithers closer to U.S. endangered list
Fri,11 May 2012 12:16 PM PDT
Reuters -  BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - The eastern diamondback rattlesnake, North America's largest venomous snake, may need its own antidote. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering adding the reptile to the Endangered Species List to restrict its hunting, killing and sale. "We are going to do our best to keep these beautiful animals on the planet with us," said Dan Everson, Deputy Field Supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service in Alabama. The service on Wednesday approved further study on the declining numbers of the snake species. ...
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Maya lunar calendar notes discovered in Guatemala
Thu,10 May 2012 03:50 PM PDT
Reuters -  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - On the wall of a tiny structure buried under forest debris in Guatemala, archaeologists have discovered a scribe's notes about the Maya lunar calendar, which they say could be the first known records by an official chronicler of this ancient civilization. These notes pertain to the same Maya calendar that is sometimes erroneously thought to predict the world's end on or about December 22, 2012. ...
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Scientists spot unseen planet in Kepler scope data
Thu,10 May 2012 12:38 PM PDT
Reuters - CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Scientists poring over data collected by NASA's Kepler space telescope have discovered a world outside its field of view, demonstrating a new technique for finding planets beyond the Solar System, scientists reported on Thursday. From its vantage point in space, Kepler stares at about 150,000 sun-like stars located a few hundred light years to a few thousand light years from Earth. One light year is about 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). The goal is to find Earth-like worlds at the right distance from their parent stars for liquid water to exist. ... Full Story | Top |
Scientists urge action on world's biggest problems
Thu,10 May 2012 11:55 AM PDT
Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists from 15 countries are calling for a better political response to the provision of water and energy to meet the challenge of feeding a world of 9 billion people within 30 years. The joint statement by some of the world's leading science academies was issued on Thursday ahead of the G8 summit in the United States. It is part of the annual lobbying effort aimed at focusing the attention of world leaders on issues the scientific community regards as crucial. ... Full Story | Top |
U.S. downs test missile with new interceptor
Thu,10 May 2012 03:50 AM PDT
Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. forces said they had destroyed a target in the first successful test of the Navy's newest anti-missile interceptor, designed to protect allies from attacks by countries like North Korea and Iran. A target ballistic missile was downed near Hawaii late on Wednesday by the latest Raytheon Co-built Standard Missile-3 interceptor, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said. The advanced interceptor is key to the next phase of an anti-missile shield being built by the United States in and around Europe. ... Full Story | Top |
Shuttle rocket-builder vying for NASA space taxi work
Wed,9 May 2012 08:05 PM PDT
Reuters -  CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two of NASA's prime contractors are teaming with Europe's Astrium to develop a commercial space taxi built from shuttle heritage booster rockets and a prototype NASA spaceship originally designed as an alternative to the deep-space Orion capsule, the companies announced on Wednesday. The system, known as Liberty, is among at least four contenders for the next phase of NASA's so-called Commercial Crew program, scheduled to be awarded this summer. ...
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Factbox: U.S. military robot systems in development
Wed,9 May 2012 12:22 PM PDT
Reuters - (Reuters) - U.S. military ground robots have proven their wartime worth over the past decade, with thousands deployed for roles like bomb detection and 750 destroyed in action, saving at least that number of human lives, the military says. Most of them have been small vehicles operated from a distance using video feeds from cameras on the robots. The military is now working on systems that can carry out more and more tasks autonomously with limited human oversight. Here are some of the systems in development. ... Full Story | Top |
U.S. military embraces robots with greater autonomy
Wed,9 May 2012 04:02 AM PDT
Reuters - PENN HILLS, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - The unattended steering wheel on the 15-ton military truck jerked sharply back and forth as the vehicle's huge tires bounced down a rain-scarred ravine through mounds of mine rubble on a rugged hillside near Pittsburgh. Oshkosh Corp engineer Noah Zych, perched in the driver's seat, kept his hands in his lap and away from the gyrating wheel as the vehicle reached the bottom of the slope and slammed into a puddle, coating the windshield in a blinding sheet of mud. ... Full Story | Top |
It's a gas: dinosaur flatulence may have warmed Earth
Mon,7 May 2012 11:40 AM PDT
Reuters -  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a major new climate finding, researchers have calculated that dinosaur flatulence could have put enough methane into the atmosphere to warm the planet during the hot, wet Mesozoic era. Like gigantic, long-necked, prehistoric cows, sauropod dinosaurs roamed widely around the Earth 150 million years ago, scientists reported in the journal Current Biology on Monday. And just like big cows, their plant digestion was aided by methane-producing microbes. ...
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Scientists "switch off" brain cell death in mice
Sun,6 May 2012 10:01 AM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have figured out how to stop brain cell death in mice with brain disease and say their discovery deepens understanding of the mechanisms of human neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. British researchers writing in the journal Nature said they had found a major pathway leading to brain cell death in mice with prion disease, the mouse equivalent of Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD). They then worked out how to block it, and were able to prevent brain cells from dying, helping the mice live longer. ...
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"Super Moon" to light up night sky this weekend
Sat,5 May 2012 12:51 PM PDT
Reuters -  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A "super Moon" will light up Saturday's night sky in a once-a-year cosmic show, overshadowing a meteor shower from remnants of Halley's Comet, the U.S. space agency NASA said. The Moon will seem especially big and bright since it will reach its closest spot to Earth at the same time it is in its full phase, NASA said. The Moon "is a 'super Moon,' as much as 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than other full Moons of 2012," it said in a statement. The scientific term for the phenomenon is "perigee moon. ...
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"Made in space" coming soon to a product near you
Fri,4 May 2012 06:38 AM PDT
Reuters - BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Space Agency is hatching plans for a branding campaign aimed at making people more aware of the benefits of spending their hard-earned taxes on the International Space Station (ISS). The list of products and technologies that have their roots in space research is long, from memory foam to the in-ear thermometer, but in a world struggling to pay the bill from the financial crisis the billions of dollars spent on space exploration are increasingly hard to justify. ... Full Story | Top |
Yoga for jets: why planemakers prefer bent wingtips
Wed,2 May 2012 04:00 PM PDT
Reuters -  CHICAGO/PARIS (Reuters) - There are, so the industry saying goes, only three secrets in the commercial airplane business: the selling price, the production cost and the shape of the wing. Boeing and Airbus are testing that proverb to the limits as they squeeze improvements out of the wings of their most popular jets to make them more aerodynamic -- hunting down extra pennies per gallon of fuel savings for ultra-thrifty airlines. ...
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Plant study flags dangers of warming world
Wed,2 May 2012 10:18 AM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - Plants are flowering faster than scientists predicted in response to climate change, research in the United States showed on Wednesday, which could have devastating knock-on effects for food chains and ecosystems. Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some breeding, migration and feeding patterns, scientists say. ...
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Italy scientists say they have found oldest human blood
Wed,2 May 2012 08:26 AM PDT
Reuters -  ROME (Reuters) - Scientists examining the remains of "Otzi," Italy's prehistoric iceman who roamed the Alps some 5,300 years ago, said on Wednesday they have isolated what are believed to be the oldest traces of human blood ever found. The German and Italian scientists said they used an atomic force microscope to examine tissue sections from a wound caused by an arrow that killed the Copper Age man, who was found frozen in a glacier, and from a laceration on his right hand. ...
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